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anunderwaterguy

Posted 08 September 2009 - 05:20 PM

Yes México beat Costa Rica at San José and moved to third place, if we win on wednesday at home against Honduras the ticket is practically ours.

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The Netherlands are already in, so perhaps they rest some of their best players, don't lose faith!

I think the Netherlands under-16 team would still beat us the way we've been playing, but we have beaten a few teams in recent years (France, etc.) so you never know.

That's interesting that you can make probability models for qualifying groups. That's the sort of statistical analysis that actually makes sense in soccer (as opposed to individual player stats which are rarely that useful). Due to the complicated qualifying system we're using in Europe everyone is arguing over how good each team's chances of qualifying are, but, of course, nobody over here would ever think to use statistical analysis to answer that question.

Pirata Morado

Posted 09 September 2009 - 06:35 AM

I think the Netherlands under-16 team would still beat us the way we've been playing, but we have beaten a few teams in recent years (France, etc.) so you never know.

That's interesting that you can make probability models for qualifying groups. That's the sort of statistical analysis that actually makes sense in soccer (as opposed to individual player stats which are rarely that useful). Due to the complicated qualifying system we're using in Europe everyone is arguing over how good each team's chances of qualifying are, but, of course, nobody over here would ever think to use statistical analysis to answer that question.

Thank you, yes, things in Europe are much more complicated, even more so because some groups have more teams than others, and only the best 8 group runner-ups will go to the Wild Card, so how do you decide which are the 8 best runner-ups?

anunderwaterguy

Posted 09 September 2009 - 05:08 PM

anunderwaterguy

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Thank you, yes, things in Europe are much more complicated, even more so because some groups have more teams than others, and only the best 8 group runner-ups will go to the Wild Card, so how do you decide which are the 8 best runner-ups?

One group (group nine) has one less team so they remove the results in the other groups involving the team which finishes last when they make the comparison. For instance in group three San Marino are last and everyone has beaten them, so when they calculate it the team from group three has the six points they won against San Marino removed from their total.

It's unfair though because if, for instance, Norway are the worst second placed team, they will go out of the World Cup for finishing second in a group behind the Netherlands (the third best team in the world according to the world rankings). I think almost any team would struggle to finish above the Netherlands the way they are playing, so you really have no chance to qualify if you're in a situation like that. It would be like Mexico being put in a group with say... Brazil and being told that they have to win the group just to qualify for the tournament! It's much fairer when all second placed teams get to at least a playoff stage.

Pirata Morado

Posted 10 September 2009 - 07:22 AM

One group (group nine) has one less team so they remove the results in the other groups involving the team which finishes last when they make the comparison. For instance in group three San Marino are last and everyone has beaten them, so when they calculate it the team from group three has the six points they won against San Marino removed from their total.

It's unfair though because if, for instance, Norway are the worst second placed team, they will go out of the World Cup for finishing second in a group behind the Netherlands (the third best team in the world according to the world rankings). I think almost any team would struggle to finish above the Netherlands the way they are playing, so you really have no chance to qualify if you're in a situation like that. It would be like Mexico being put in a group with say... Brazil and being told that they have to win the group just to qualify for the tournament! It's much fairer when all second placed teams get to at least a playoff stage.

You're aboslutely right, it's a strange format. México was struggling against teams like El Salvador and Honduras, but with 4 straight wins México is almost in already. The problem with Europe is that there are many good teams and too few spots for them.

Europe has 53 countries registred in UEFA (Israel is registred in UEFA), but there are only 14 spots available (26% go ahead).While in Conmebol there are only 10 countries and the top 4 classify directly but even the 5th gets a chance so either 40% or 50% get in.

I know it would be a mess to get a different classification procedure in Europe, with 53 teams, making it impossible to schedule, perhaps they should make regions, but that wouldn't be very popular, since most of Western European teams are the best.

I really don't know how to improve the classification procedure.

Perhaps by joining Conmebol (South America) with Concacaf (Central and North America) into one group, but then travelling becomes an issue, imagine Canada playing against Chile in Santiago on a saturday and then having to host a game at Toronto the next wednesday, for instance.

Africa, OTOH has become better and only have 5 spots, that's the same number of spots that Conmebol can get, but there are plenty more african nations (48), so only 10% get in. It usually gets very tough for african countries to get in, because only the top team of each of the final 5 groups gets in. Cameroon (where Eto'o is from) is trying hard in a very tough group with Gabon, Togo and Morocco.

Recent discussions about the top 2 players possibly being out of the World Cup are heating up. Portugal (where Cristiano Ronaldo is from) is 3rd in their group, 2 points behind Sweeden and 5 behind Denmark (a very tough group). Argentina (where Messi is from) is also struggling to get in, as they stand as the 5th place right now in Conmebol, but only one point ahead of Uruguay and Venezuela and 2 points ahead of Colombia, so they could easily get out.

Pirata Morado

Posted 10 September 2009 - 07:40 AM

I'm trying to think on how to improve the qualification procedure. Ignoring for a moment the extensive travelling that joining all America into one region would make, perhaps we could join all Americas (10 Concacaf teams + 10 Conmebol teams) into 4 groups like this:

Pirata Morado

Posted 10 September 2009 - 08:12 AM

As for Europe things are much more complicated, with the odd number of countries there are (53). Additionally, the way UEFA classifies their countries puts too much weigh on recent results, like Greece winning the Euro 2004.

I still don't understand why Denmark, Sweeden and Portgual end up in the same group, while there's a group like this: Switzerland, Greece, Latvia, Israel, Luxemburg, Moldavia. All 3 in group 1, Denmark, Sweeden and Portgual are clearly better teams than all of group 2 teams, but since Greece won the Euro in 2004, they still consider them a "good" team.

The problem I see is that they built 9 groups but I don't see 9 teams in the same top level.

Clearly Spain, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, England are in the top level, but even the Netherlands and England have failed to qualify in recent tournaments. Only Spain, Germany and Italy seem to be perennial.

There's another top group who aren't even leading their groups right now: France, Portugal, Czech Republic.

anunderwaterguy

Posted 10 September 2009 - 10:55 AM

anunderwaterguy

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I think travel is becoming less of an issue as technology advances, so it's perhaps possible to make CONMEBOL and CONCACAF play in the same section. I mean, if you look at the African and Asian qualifying groups some of the distances are very large - Saudia Arabia playing Japan or Australia for instance, is a journey to the other side of the world - yet these countries seem to manage. It also has to be said that so many players are playing in Europe now (even if Maradona wants to fill Argentina's squad with guys like Martin Palermo who play in Argentina) that it becomes less important - if Argentina are playing in Canada then it's as easy for Messi to fly from Barcelona straight to Toronto as it is to Rosario or Buenos Aires. Also, Toronto may be a long way from Santiago, but the time differences aren't so large - it's far worse when you're travelling long distances east or west (Saudia Arabia is 7 hours behind Sydney!)

Europe is another issue and you're right that the seedings don't make sense. Your pots are far fairer than the pots they actually came up with - we had a silly situation where Greece were top seeds and England weren't, plus teams like Denmark and Slovakia were third and fourth seeds. The number of games is an issue, so what I would argue is that they should have preliminary qualifying to get down to 45 teams and then have 5 groups of 9. In CONCACAF you use a similar system to get rid of terrible teams like Anguilla and the U.S. Virgin islands and we have some teams that are just as bad. If you have the lowest ranked 16 teams play each other in a two leg playoff then you can reduce the teams to 45. For example:

The countries who have to play in these games won't like it, but teams like San Marino (which is a country of 30,000 people) add nothing to the qualifying and it's just a waste of time for bigger countries to have to go and beat them 10-0 every time - San Marino has lost every qualifying game in the last 8 years. For the better countries like Georgia and Lithuania it really isn't that hard for them to get through as the team they're playing is so poor. It may actually add a bit of excitement for these smaller teams because they can play some matches where they can win something instead of just losing all of the time.

Pirata Morado

Posted 10 September 2009 - 06:02 PM

I think travel is becoming less of an issue as technology advances, so it's perhaps possible to make CONMEBOL and CONCACAF play in the same section. I mean, if you look at the African and Asian qualifying groups some of the distances are very large - Saudia Arabia playing Japan or Australia for instance, is a journey to the other side of the world - yet these countries seem to manage. It also has to be said that so many players are playing in Europe now (even if Maradona wants to fill Argentina's squad with guys like Martin Palermo who play in Argentina) that it becomes less important - if Argentina are playing in Canada then it's as easy for Messi to fly from Barcelona straight to Toronto as it is to Rosario or Buenos Aires. Also, Toronto may be a long way from Santiago, but the time differences aren't so large - it's far worse when you're travelling long distances east or west (Saudia Arabia is 7 hours behind Sydney!)

Europe is another issue and you're right that the seedings don't make sense. Your pots are far fairer than the pots they actually came up with - we had a silly situation where Greece were top seeds and England weren't, plus teams like Denmark and Slovakia were third and fourth seeds. The number of games is an issue, so what I would argue is that they should have preliminary qualifying to get down to 45 teams and then have 5 groups of 9. In CONCACAF you use a similar system to get rid of terrible teams like Anguilla and the U.S. Virgin islands and we have some teams that are just as bad. If you have the lowest ranked 16 teams play each other in a two leg playoff then you can reduce the teams to 45. For example:

The countries who have to play in these games won't like it, but teams like San Marino (which is a country of 30,000 people) add nothing to the qualifying and it's just a waste of time for bigger countries to have to go and beat them 10-0 every time - San Marino has lost every qualifying game in the last 8 years. For the better countries like Georgia and Lithuania it really isn't that hard for them to get through as the team they're playing is so poor. It may actually add a bit of excitement for these smaller teams because they can play some matches where they can win something instead of just losing all of the time.

That's a very good idea! I agree, all those countries end up losing all their games so I don't see the point of letting them "compete" against Germany, or Italy, or Spain. That would still leave the 9 groups so, there would still be the 4 play-off matches and 1 runner-up who won't play one of the playoffs, which I find kind of odd.

How is the qualifying for the Euro done? There are 16 teams in the Euro, but one is automatically qualified. Well, in the last edition there were co-hosts (Switzerland and Austria) so 2 countries qualified directly, so there were 14 teams to draw upon again, perhaps they used the same logic.

anunderwaterguy

Posted 11 September 2009 - 05:42 AM

anunderwaterguy

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That's a very good idea! I agree, all those countries end up losing all their games so I don't see the point of letting them "compete" against Germany, or Italy, or Spain. That would still leave the 9 groups so, there would still be the 4 play-off matches and 1 runner-up who won't play one of the playoffs, which I find kind of odd.

Well we have 13 places in the World Cup, so you could make it 8 groups if you did something like this. Lowest ranked ten teams play in a playoff -

That gets it down to 48 teams, then you could play 8 groups of 6 teams with the group winners all qualifying, the two best second placed teams qualifying, and the six remaining second placed teams playing in a playoff.

8 winners + 2 best second placed teams + 3 playoff winners = 13 teams

If you did this you wouldn't have teams getting eliminated just for finishing second behind one of the best teams in the world and you could get rid of the confusing rule about taking away results against the bottom teams in the group. UEFA actually thought about doing a similar system to this, but there were complaints that having only 8 groups would have made for too many matches (they don't want to get rid of poor San Marino and the rest, so some groups would have had 7 teams). It's beyond silly to have a decent team like Norway getting eliminated just so these smaller teams can participate, but maybe in five years time San Marino will manage to score one goal again and the people will have something to celebrate - they still celebrate the game 15 years ago where they scored against England but lost 7-1!

anunderwaterguy

Posted 11 September 2009 - 05:52 AM

anunderwaterguy

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How is the qualifying for the Euro done? There are 16 teams in the Euro, but one is automatically qualified. Well, in the last edition there were co-hosts (Switzerland and Austria) so 2 countries qualified directly, so there were 14 teams to draw upon again, perhaps they used the same logic.

In the last Euros they just had 7 groups with the top two teams both qualifying. It was a lot fairer and easier to understand and also made for some great matches because you had some groups with two good teams. It wasn't so good for Scotland though because we drew France and Italy in our group (the two world cup finalists) and still didn't get through even though we beat France home and away.

However, that's really just because of UEFA's seedings being wrong again - somehow Italy and Germany were both second seeds. I think it's a better system if the seedings are done properly.